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Famous Smoothing Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Smoothing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous smoothing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous smoothing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Gregory, Rg
...all is still on this starless night
the mountain waits
quiescent as a cat
smoothing crag and chasm
to a white fur

then against the black sky
puffs of snow
flutter from a jutting cliff
into obscurity

a drumroll utters
from the mountain's throat
and stops
reprehended by a silence so intense
that even night
seems shallow in its presence

high up a front of snow
crumples and cascades down
plashing from rock to rock
spawning further ...Read more of this...



by Skillman, Judith
...above her head
she hardly realizes
why she leaves
her clothes on the rocks,

passes a hand absently
through water
as if smoothing
an infant’s forehead.
Instead she takes the fruit

pressed into her hand
and watches the bloody stone
wet her fingers.
Wasn’t sweetness always 
a symbol for their falling.

She walks with the man
along the river bank
until they come to know
the sore places
in the soles of their feet,

the fish knifing away.
Under the currents
every ...Read more of this...

by Reeser, Jennifer
...Moscow ballet at seven in the evening.
You look at everything. You lay your cheek
against my shoulder, smoothing down my sleeve,
the Russian blizzards somehow less than bleak,
portrayed with whimsy on the backdrop screens
in dolloped watercolors as they are.
I ask if you know what their movement means.
You wish our situation not so far.

And everywhere, the audience defies
convention and conformity, some dressed
as though they had been made to imp...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...den residence.
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard
My mother Circe with the Sirens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,
Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs,
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul,
And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause...Read more of this...

by Edson, Russell
...another.

 And it is such a private thing the thing they do.

 He is forming her into the wallpaper. He is 
smoothing her down into the flowers there. He is finding 
her nipples there. And he is kissing her pubis there.

 He climbs into the wallpaper among the flowers. And 
his buttocks move in and out of the wall....Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...herub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song,
In her sweetest saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustomed oak.
Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among
I woo, to hear thy even-song;
And, missing thee,I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near ...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...he sunshine on their glittering wings,
How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!
No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose;
And where they fly for dinner no one knows—
The dew-drops feed them not—they love the shine
Of noon, whose suns may bring them golden wine
All day they're playing in their Sunday dress—
When night reposes, for they can do no less;
Then, to the heath-bell's purple hood they fly,
And like to princes in their slumber...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ish that she hardly dared to own, 
For something better than she had known. 

The Judge rode slowly down the lane, 
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. 

He drew his bridle in the shade 
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, 

And asked a draught from the spring that flowed 
Through the meadow across the road. 

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, 
And filled for him her small tin cup, 

And blushed as she gave it, looking down 
On her feet so bare, an...Read more of this...

by Green, Adrian
...There are no lies 
in the morning
no cheating of age

an illusion of eye
smoothing skin over bone.

No portrait hidden away
becoming skeletal
and demanding release.

Another day to face,
my confessor, so laugh
at this charting of years....Read more of this...

by Hall, Donald
...buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns. 
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill 
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,

and lay the shotgun's muzzle...Read more of this...

by Hall, Donald
...rtop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze,
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning,
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond,
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,

and lay the shotgun's muz...Read more of this...

by Strode, William
...Could any shewe where Plynyes people dwell
Whose head stands in their breast; who cannot tell
A smoothing lye because their open hart
And lippes are joyn'd so neare, I would depart
As quick as thought, and there forgett the wrongs
Which I have suffer'd by deceitfull tongues.
I should depart where soules departed bee,
Who being freed from cloudy flesh, can see
Each other so immediately, so cleare
That none needs tongue to speak, nor ears to hear.Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...aming off your points, awakening
the tacky soap to blossom and ripe autumn, releasing the squeezed gardens,
smoky valet smoothing your impalpable overnight pyjamas off,
pillar you can step through, force-field absolving love's efforts,
nicest yard of the jogging track, speeding aeroplane minutely
steered with two controls, or trimmed with a knurled wheel.
Some people like to still this energy and lie in it,
stirring circles with their pleasure in it, but my delight's that...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...nstancy in love,Whose face with snow, whose locks with gold compare.Smoothing her aged husband's silvery hair,Bids me the joys of rural music prove.Then, waking, I salute the sun of day;But chief that beauteous sun, whose cheering rayOnce gilt, nay gilds e'en now, life's scene so bright.Dear suns!...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ick lips on his, no feminine 
Completeness and love-fragrance in the house, 
No sound of some one singing any more, 
No smoothing of slow fingers on his hair,
No shimmer of pink slippers on brown tiles. 

But there was nothing, nothing, in all that: 
He had not fooled himself so much as that; 
He might be dreaming or he might be sick, 
But not like that. There was no place for fear,
No reason for remorse. There was the book 
That he had made, though.… It might...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...both my eyes beside thy breast,
Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands,
Back to its proper size again, and smoothing
Distortion down till every nerve had soothing,
And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed.

V.

How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After thy healing, with such different eyes. 
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ----
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old ...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs